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Twitter has sharply escalated its battle against fake and suspicious accounts, suspending more than 1 million a day. The rate of account suspensions has more than doubled since October 2017, when the company revealed under congressional pressure how Russia used fake accounts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July, according to the data.

This is an op-ed—meaning it is the author's personal view—from The New York Times.

For nearly the last two decades, Japan has been held up as a cautionary tale, an object lesson on how not to run an advanced economy. After all, the island nation is the rising superpower that stumbled. And Western economists were scathing in their criticisms of Japanese policy.

Shinzo Abe is on course to become Japan's longest-serving prime minister—and achieve his goal of revising the country's pacifist constitution—after he was comfortably re-elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic party [LDP] on Thursday, September 20.

Abe's victory—taking 553 votes out of a total of 807—means he is assured of continuing as prime minister and is expected to use his mandate to push ahead with controversial plans to strengthen the legal status of Japan's military, known as the self-defence forces.

In August, an emotional Elon Musk described how he was working so hard to keep production of the Tesla Model 3 on track that he missed his own birthday. Musk had been working 120-hour weeks, often not leaving the factory for three or four days.

Musk has long been celebrated by the business press for his work ethic. His extraordinary schedule—a long working day broken into five-minute increments, so that every second is accounted for—has been reported, approvingly, for some years now.

A Japanese medical school has been accused of manipulating the test scores of female applicants for years to artificially depress the number of women in the student body, a scandal that has triggered sharp criticism.

The revelations have highlighted institutional barriers that women in Japan still face as they pursue work in fields that have long been dominated by men.

New Zealand hasn't been walking the talk on climate risk, finds a sweeping new analysis of hundreds of annual reports and statements.

The Japanese government wants women to work more and have more children, but it lacks concrete plans of how to do so. To begin with, there is a drastic need to increase government-funded care for children of all ages. In Japanese elementary schools, a lot of the activities and meetings fall in the middle of a weekday, and while public afterschool care does exist, in many places it is only for children up through third grade.

Japan's lower house on May 31 approved controversial labour reforms that the government has defended as necessary to boost the economy. But, critics warn could result in more death by overwork. The legislation would scrap hourly overtime pay for some employees, while setting overtime caps for others at an annual limit of 360 hours for normal cases, and up to 720 hours for "temporary" and "special" cases. 

A steep decline in coral cover right across the Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, is a phenomenon that “has not been observed in the historical record”, a new report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) says.

 “The predicted consequences of climate change include more powerful storms and more frequent and more intense bleaching events. Reefs in the northern section have lost about half their coral cover. The central section also sustained significant coral loss”. Total coral cover decreased from 22% in 2016 to 14% in 2018.

A pioneering project by Highview Power will turn air into liquid for energy storage to help electricity grids cope with a growing amount of wind and solar power.  

Massimo Bottura is one of the world's greatest chefs. He has made it his mission to put an end to global hunger and believes that technology can make this a reality.

In the summer of 2019, French swimmer and anti-plastic campaigner Ben Lecomte swam through the giant floating rubbish mass known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 

The exact size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is impossible to determine, but estimates put it anywhere from 700,000 to 15,000,000 km² (or the size of Texas to the size of Russia). The patch is caused by the North Pacific gyre—a circle of currents that keep plastic, waste and other pollution trapped. According to scientists, the Patch has been growing “exponentially” in recent years.

Employees' brain waves are reportedly being monitored in factories, state-owned enterprises, and the military across China.

The technology works by placing wireless sensors in employees' caps or hats which, combined with artificial intelligence algorithms, spot incidents of workplace rage, anxiety, or sadness.

The "emotional surveillance technology" helps employers identify mood shifts so they can change break times, an employee's task, or even send them home.

Japan heatwave declared natural disaster (BBC News)

Sixteen areas in China are using facial-recognition technology that can reportedly scan the country's population in one second, and the world's population in two seconds.

Over the last two years the system has been used to arrest 2,000 people.

The system is part of Skynet, a nationwide monitoring program launched in 2005 to increase the use and capabilities of surveillance cameras.

On Sunday 8th April, Ohtani had a perfect game through six innings and ended with seven strikeouts. Oh, and this was after hitting home runs in three straight games as the Angels designated hitter.

Hong Kong has one of the worst housing crises in the world, and has been ranked the least affordable city for housing for the last eight years.

Hong Kong architect James Law has designed a low-cost solution to the problem: stackable, retro-fitted water pipe "tube homes" called "O-Pods" that could be rented cheaply to young people.

"If we can work with governments, and even private landowners and manufacturers, we could very cheaply build the O-Pods, and we could rent them out very cheaply to young people who are struggling to afford housing."

We are now experiencing the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), a period of rapid change driven by progress in science and technology. The main drivers of 4IR are AI, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT). Japan will play a leading role in global innovation with a new World Economic Forum (WEF) center devoted to maximizing the potential of the 4IR, says Klaus Schwab, WEF founder and executive chairman.

Hit by its worst weather catastrophe in decades, Japan watched in horror in the summer of 2018 as torrential rains caused more than 200 deaths and 600 landslides, with whole villages swallowed by floods. The rains, which prompted millions to flee their homes and left 250,000 houses without water or electricity, were the worst weather-related crisis for 35 years.

Japan, in a move that few could have foreseen, has opened at least eight brand new coal-burning power plants in the last two years and has plans for at least 36 more in the next ten years.

[Critics] say that the government is being weak on renewables and that the return to coal guarantees a major rise in air pollution, standing in direct conflict with Japan’s pledges to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. As it stands now, the country is responsible for a whopping 4 percent of global emissions, and that’s before the impending construction of 36 coal plants over the next decade.